In 1975, a Canadian broadcaster named George Atkins was invited to run a workshop in Zambia for a group of African farm radio broadcasters. It was on that trip that he had an idea that would go on to transform farm radio on the continent. While chatting with his African colleagues on a bumpy bus ride to a local farm, George asked a colleague from Sierra Leone about his next broadcast, and was astonished to learn that it would be about tractors. He asked how many farmers within the station's broadcast range might have a tractor. About 10 in 800,000. At that time, African farm broadcasters simply did not have access to locally relevant agricultural information and resources and were basing their broadcasts on European and North American radio scripts, which reflected a completely different reality. And so George took a year off and traveled the world on the hunt for low-cost, environmentally friendly ways to improve agricultural production in resource-poor environments. Upon his return to Canada, he started creating radio scripts designed to be useful for small-scale farmers in developing countries. In 1979, he established the Developing Countries Farm Radio Network and sent the first package of scripts by mail to 34 participating broadcasters in 26 countries. Now known as Farm Radio International, its work is focused specifically in sub-Saharan Africa, where it works with more than 1,000 radio partners in 41 countries to fight poverty and food insecurity over the airwaves.
